Videos emerge showing Irish hostage’s last days
The statement was made against her will during Ms Hassan’s captivity in November of 2004, in the weeks before she was killed by her abductors.
Qatar-based television news station Al Jazeera has possession of videotapes sent by kidnappers following Ms Hassan’s kidnapping on October 19, 2004.
Already broadcast is one showing her pleading with then British prime minister Tony Blair to help her, and to withdraw British troops from Iraq.
A tape, which was never shown by Al Jazeera, features Ms Hassan — who held Irish, British and Iraqi passports being prompted to read from a prepared text: “I admit that we worked with the occupation forces,” she says.
Her supporters say that she was forced into making the statement, as she and her aid organisation CARE were against the invasion by America and Britain.
The last tape shows a woman with a blindfold over her face being shot in the head by a man wearing a scarf to conceal his identity.
The tapes are among many held by Al Jazeera showing murders being carried out by terror squads in the Middle East.
Margaret Hassan, 59, was born in Dublin and has family members in the city and in Kenmare, Co Kerry. She moved to Britain with her family and later began working with humanitarian organisations in the Middle East, spending nearly half her life bringing food and medicine to Iraq.
The video purporting to show her murder was released within a month of her abduction on the streets of Baghdad, but her body has never been found.
Criticism in the wake of her murder focused on the British government for its refusal to speak to the kidnappers.
